“We all know the next two years are not going to be like the last two years,” says Buddy Blake, owner of independent brokerage Waypost Realty in Wilmington, NC. “We don’t know exactly what’s coming, but we know the market is shifting. What I’m thinking is, ‘What am I going to do to help my agents utilize systems and leads we’ve got to generate listings and save money?’”
The changing market brings it into sharp focus, but the truth is that every successful team or brokerage faces a similar challenge at some point. Over time, they acquire a sizable database of leads who express interest but who never convert to an actual client. There is gold in this database of past leads — ROI buried in the money they’ve already spent. The question is how to find it.
“Automations surface opportunities. They don’t replace relationships.”
“There’s no silver bullet,” says Blake, a former RE/MAX franchise owner who has been in the industry for more than 20 years. “It’s still about the fundamentals of follow-up. But the good news is that technology now gives us advantages we didn’t use to have. It helps us know where to look. It helps us get through what used to be roadblocks.”
One common roadblock can be the difficulty of getting agents to be disciplined about keeping CRM data up-to-date. Most agents get into real estate because they enjoy relationships and helping people — but the attention to detail required to effectively follow up with a lead database doesn’t always come as easily.
A modern CRM like the Sierra Interactive platform leverages lead routing, action plans, and automation to handle the small-but-important details reliably every time. The platform integrates all messaging channels — text messages, emails, calls, voicemails, and on-site website messages — in a way that serves as a multiplier for how many prospects and past clients an agent, team, or broker can reach. Additional details like applying action plans, updating pipeline statuses, and signaling agents to step in are completed automatically so that agents and ISAs are in exactly the position they like to be in — knowing who to call and when.
“Automations surface opportunities. They don’t replace relationships,” Blake adds. “We still have to make the phone calls and provide great service, but with better tools and better data, we get better results.”
“These are people we would not have called. This was gold we didn’t know we had.”
As a specific example, Blake points to the seller lead scoring integration recently launched in his Sierra Interactive CRM. The integration uses machine learning and predictive analytics to score a person’s likelihood to move on a scale of 0 to 100, working only from the lead’s email address. The integration rates each lead in Blake’s Sierra dashboard, where automated workflows place the high-scoring leads front-and-center for his ISA team.
“We have a pond in Sierra that’s full of leads that no one was paying attention to. Once we scored those leads, we set our ISA team to use Sierra’s dialer to call the top 800 leads with the highest scores. We’ve set 9 appointments so far out of that first sampling of 800. And these are people who were in our database but not at all on our radar. These are people we would not have called. This was gold we didn’t know we had.”
These automations support not only the relationship between the agent and prospect, but, just as importantly, between the broker or team leader and the agent. When technology helps an agent be more effective with less time in the weeds of database maintenance, it’s a win all the way around: more closed deals, better agent retention, and higher levels of satisfaction.
In addition to organic and paid lead generation, the Sierra platform enables clients to import contacts from any system, spreadsheet or database, including powerful integrations via API and Zapier. Learn more about how Sierra Interactive’s automations and integrations can help you convert new leads and find the gold in the database you already have.
Sierra Interactive’s proven lead generation and management solutions are trusted by top-performing teams and influential coaches in the real estate industry across the US and Canada. Founded in 2007, Sierra is headquartered in Louisville, KY, but has a remote-first workforce across the U.S. For more information, visit SierraInteractive.com.